Tile Calculator

Tiles needed = room floor area ÷ area of one tile, plus a waste allowance for cuts, breakage, and future repairs. US mode uses room size in feet and tile size in inches; metric uses meters and centimeters.

Add 10% waste for straight layouts and 15% or more for diagonal patterns, narrow rooms, or many obstacles. Always round up to whole boxes — suppliers rarely sell partial tiles.

Example: a 10 ft × 8 ft room (80 sq ft) with 12×12 inch tiles (1 sq ft each) needs 80 tiles before waste. At 10% waste, order 88 tiles.

Waste allowance is where most DIY orders go short. Straight layouts with few obstacles usually need about 10% extra; diagonal patterns, herringbone, narrow halls, and rooms with many corners commonly need 15% or more. Always round up to whole boxes — suppliers rarely sell single tiles, and dye lots shift between production runs.

Buy all tiles for a room from the same dye lot when possible. Mixing boxes from different lots can produce visible shade variation across a floor, which is hard to fix after installation. Keep a few spare tiles from the same lot for future repairs.

Grout joint width barely changes whole-tile count at standard 1/8 to 3/16 inch spacing, so you can ignore it for ordering. Large-format tiles (24 inches and up) need flatter subfloors; add leveling compound to the budget when the slab is uneven, because lippage shows more on bigger faces.

Metric tile packs often list coverage in square metres. Convert the room area once, then divide by the pack coverage rather than converting each tile — a 10 × 8 ft room is about 7.4 m², and a pack covering 1.44 m² needs six packs before waste.

This estimate covers floor area only. Wall tile, niches, and shower pans need separate measurements. Pattern layout and cut plans from the installer can still change the final count after you order.

Large-format tiles need fewer grout lines but crack more easily on uneven subfloors — add leveling compound cost to your project budget when tile edges exceed 12 inches.